Insubordination
by Battypichugirl2
Summary: Riza has always been loyal to Mustang. Doesn't mean she'll always wait for orders. Royai.


**A/N: Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! That's right, for once I'm actually posting a holiday fic on time! xDD  
**

**Soooo. This is kind of the fastest I've ever written up something (three days), but I'm really happy with the way it turned out. Spoilers for Episode 25, just as a note. Anyway, this fic is for my good friend Taisa, who wrote me a really cute Al/Scar friendship for Christmas. =D I know you weren't looking forward to this day at all, Tai, but I hope that you enjoy this, even if it doesn't make you feel any better. (It's kind of depressing anyway, so. ^^; ) ILY.  
**

Her name wasn't Hawkeye for nothing. She was one of the most skilled marksmen in the entire military. She could fire a clean outline of bullets around someone as a warning, without fear of hurting that person.

But Riza Hawkeye's appropriate last name applied to more than just her skills as a soldier; the First Lieutenant was a very perceptive woman. She could see that the Elrics understood their minimal chances of finding the Philosopher's Stone, but that it was a point of hope for them, and gave them purpose—that was why they wouldn't give up on it. She could see that Mustang's frequent flirtatious behaviors and blasé attitude tended to be a way to distract himself from the last vestiges of lingering guilt over Ishbal (that hadn't been transformed into ambition to become the Fuhrer and better the state). She could see that despite their foibles, Fuery, Falman, Havoc, and Breda held their ultimate loyalty to Mustang, not Fuhrer Bradley, and would remain devoted to him to their dying day, just as she had herself sworn to do.

She could see, now, that Mustang couldn't move forward from Hughes's death. He was trying; there was no doubt about that. He put on a brave face for his men, assuring them he was all right as they presented their concern for him, but for Riza, who interacted with him constantly, spending a large portion of her time on duty each day in his office, the colonel's pain was far more apparent.

"Sir," she prodded gently, a soft tone to her voice that was not usually present when she addressed him. "Sir…there are a few more papers left to sign." He had been staring off into space again. It had been happening more and more often in the past weeks—he would start a task and then just suddenly stop and start staring off again, presumably lost in his thoughts. She had increasingly had to be the one to pull him back to reality.

Mustang heard her words, but at first they didn't register. A few seconds passed, and Riza opened her mouth to speak again, when he finally blinked and turned to face her. "Oh…" His voice was quiet, passive…drained of strength. "Sorry. Have you been waiting long, lieutenant?"

She'd handed him the papers to sign almost fifteen minutes ago, but she shook her head. This is how it had been for the past two months or so. Riza would take care of any task that didn't directly require proof of the colonel's participation—such as a signature—and when she did indeed require it, she tried to be as unobtrusive as possible. She came in before Mustang arrived and generally stayed after he left, taking care that he didn't leave anything important behind.

He fumbled around for his pen for a few moments, and distractedly started to scrawl his name down on the dotted line.

"Erm…sir," she interrupted him, pointing uneasily at the signature he was starting to write. "That's…that's not your name."

"What? Of course it—" the colonel cut himself off as he saw what he had started to write. He had just finished the last curve of the "s" that ended the name "Maes." Damn. Onyx eyes shifted guiltily to a picture frame laying flat on his desk, conspicuously turned backside-up.

"Shit," he muttered softly, irritated with himself. Teeth clenched tightly and he let out a low growl. He scratched out his late best friend's name and angrily replaced it with his own. The man lifted the sheet to hand it to his lieutenant when he noticed there was another sheet underneath it. He flicked through the sheets with an index finger, vaguely appraising how many were left to do. Another growl escaped him, this time louder and lasting a beat longer.

And then suddenly, he began to vigorously tear into the remaining paperwork left for him, his handwriting becoming successively less legible with each signature, to the point where by the time he finished the last one, not only was perceiving "Roy Mustang" out of the chicken scratch a non-issue altogether, one would be hard-pressed to realize that the two capitalized letters represented the initials "R" and "M", respectively.

He gave a hollow sigh as the task was finished, and fumbled to gather the papers together, pen dropping to the desk with a clatter as he did so. There were sounds of irritation escaping the man as papers slipped and shuffled between his fingers out of the pile.

Riza watched him quietly for a moment, heart aching at how even simple tasks were confounding her superior. A hand on top of his halted his clumsy attempts.

"I've got this, sir," she told him gently, picking up the papers all at once and quickly and efficiently gathering them into a small, neat stack. Mustang caught her eye and gave her an acknowledging nod, not sure what else to say.

"…Do you want to talk about it, sir?" Riza asked after a moment. A raven-haired head jolted upward immediately, steely eyes dulled slightly by grief wide and staring at her in shock.

"Wh-what…?"

"Would you like to talk about it, sir?" she repeated. She knew what was bothering him, but thought he might feel at least a little better by talking about it himself.

The colonel continued to stare at her with that deer in headlights look for a few moments and then finally relaxed. "I'm…I'm fine, lieutenant. Thank you. I appreciate your concern." He was staring off into space again.

Riza was not put off or discouraged by his response. Roy Mustang's pride was very much an omnipresent factor in her work, and if she were to be completely honest with herself, she was actually a bit relieved that the colonel still had enough of his pride to resist the question and revealing his feelings.

"Talking might help, sir," she tried again, the gentility from before still present in her voice. "We've been worried about you." He didn't answer for a full minute, and thinking he had spaced out again, she touched his shoulder softly.

"There's nothing to talk about." When he finally spoke, his voice sounded so weak and broken. Riza knew he was still struggling to suppress his emotions, hide them from the public view, so she couldn't help but feel guilty about asking him to talk when it just made it that much harder for him not to show just how much he was suffering. She had cared about the man too—the investigations officer's perpetually cheerful attitude and delighted bragging about his family made him easy to get attached to, even if he could be annoying at times—but she knew how much more it must have been affecting Mustang. They had been best friends for years, through thick and thin, through Ishbal…The ever-present smile had always been there to cheer him when he was down, when he doubted if he was doing the right thing in continuing to climb the military ladder. Riza understood that in many ways, Hughes was primarily responsible for helping keep Mustang sane in the rough years during and since Ishbal. And Mustang…he had kept her sane through all those years, and she owed a great debt to the late brigadier general for that.

"He's dead. There's nothing more to say, Lieutenant Hawkeye."

"Sir, I'm so—"

"Maes Hughes is dead—what more is there to say?!" he shouted angrily, seemingly incensed as Riza spoke again, probably misconstruing her effort to apologize as an attempt at further intrusion into his psyche. An arm flailed out against the desk as he spoke, and the upturned picture was knocked to the ground, the glass of the frame that protected the picture shattering upon impact.

"_Goddamn it!!"_ he cried out in frustration as he kneeled down on the floor to clean up the mess he'd just made.

"Sir, let me help you with that…"

Grumblings about "damn stupid picture frames" as he busied himself with the broken glass caused him to not even hear her.

"_Sir…"_ she repeated, a little more forcefully. Still no response. "COLONEL MUSTANG!" The intensity of the shout startled him, causing him to cut his hand on a shard of glass he was holding.

"Agh! Shit."

Riza sighed, stepping forward to take matters into her own hands. "Here, I'll take care of this. You should go wash out your hand; see if you can find a first aid kit too. That should help."

He stared at her for a moment, then nodded mutely. As he got up and started to leave, Hawkeye interrupted him again.

"Colonel, wait."

"Yes?" he asked, looking briefly over his shoulder. The exhaustion in his face was almost alarming. There were dark bags under his eyes from an ongoing lack of a restful night's sleep, and his face seemed just a bit paler than usual. Just under thirty years old, the young colonel looked at least forty right now.

"Why don't you go home a bit early tonight, sir? I can handle things here, and if I need help, Havoc and Fuery are still here for a few hours. You look like you could use the rest."

The colonel bristled at the offer at first—as a commanding officer, he couldn't just shirk his responsibilities because of his personal issues—but he caught that glint of defiance that was so familiar in Edward's eyes which just _dared_ him to pull rank on her and refuse, and, giving her a faint smile, nodded. He noted the calendar hanging on the wall on his way out.

---

Several hours later, Riza was preparing to go home as well. It was around seven, the sun having just finished dipping below the horizon, leaving brilliant red and orange hues in its wake. Even through the window of the somewhat gloomy military office, the sunset and the colors left behind were beautiful.

She had just finished wishing Fuery a nice evening, and was packing up her things—and some of Mustang's as well—to leave. She'd go home, change into more comfortable clothes than her military wear, and after getting herself something to eat, would probably sit down with a book and read until she felt like getting to bed. She didn't really have much in the way of personal plans for the night; she rarely did unless she was driving Mustang and Hughes home after a night of getting themselves inebriated. It was something she'd never minded doing; Riza wasn't much of a drinker herself, but she had never had a problem waiting for the pair while they exchanged pleasantries, news, and just…_talked_ about things. They had been such a perfect pair of best friends, Riza thought, so different in personality, but able to understand each other better than she could have ever understood either of them, however much she wanted to. But she had had no jealousy towards their close relationship—had never had. To see the way Hughes and Mustang just seemed to complete each other as only the closest of close friends could made her happy too.

As these thoughts circulated around in her mind, she realized suddenly that she was driving the wrong way if she wanted to get home. A slight pink crept onto her she realized that she had subconsciously been heading to Mustang's apartment.

Riza debated turning around for a moment, but before she could make a decision, the stoplight ahead of her turned green, forcing her to go forward.

It wouldn't hurt to see how he was doing, she reasoned—he had been so depressed when he left, and he could probably use the company. Besides, she'd have to see him to give him back the things he'd left at his desk that afternoon anyway. She tried to ignore the fact that her chest felt just a little tighter as she reasoned this out to herself.

About fifteen minutes later, Riza arrived at Mustang's place of residence. She walked confidently up the steps towards his door, shoving any last doubts firmly to the very back of her mind, and knocked once on the door.

Several seconds passed before anything happened, and Riza was preparing to knock again when she finally got an answer.

Roy Mustang was not expecting a visitor, and was right in the middle of changing clothes when the knock sounded. "Just a minute!" the deep male voice called out. Several passed before the colonel finally made it to the door, still fumbling with his tie with one hand as he reached out for the doorknob with the other.

He distractedly moved to grab something from the nearby counter as the door swung open, then turned back to greet whoever his visitor was…and was visibly surprised when he did.

"Oh…Hawkeye. Erm, good evening," he greeted, trying to combat his surprise.

"Good evening, colonel," she greeted with a smile, "I thought I would come and—"

"Check on me?" he finished for her as he suddenly realized the reason for her arrival. She stared at him for a moment before nodding.

"I thought you might like some company," she answered.

He gave her a somewhat weak smile in response. "I'll be all right, Riza," he assured her, "It's the least I owe Hughes to try to have a good time tonight. He always did."

She tried her best to conceal her hurt. So he was going out somewhere—that would explain the suit and tie, as well as the scent of cologne coming from him. And here she had come to keep him company—apparently he didn't need it. "You…have plans, _sir_?"

Roy flinched at the intonation of the last word, but answered in the affirmative nonetheless. "I do. A date."

"I see," she forced herself to answer, biting her lip. Mustang and Havoc having a date on the same night—that's something she thought she'd never see. Or perhaps Havoc was about to be stood up. "I'll be on my way then—sorry to have disturbed you."

"At least, I hope I do."

Riza's heart skipped a beat. "…Excuse me?" The question was put on hold for a moment as Mustang asked her to wait 'just one moment,' and returned with…a bouquet of flowers? In that moment, Riza could swear she saw a hint of that playful smirk that had been absent from the grieving man's face for so long reappear.

"So, what do you say? Do I have a date tonight?"

Her throat went dry as she stared at the flowers, and after an extremely long moment, only managed to nod slowly.

---

The rest of the evening ran fairly ordinary as far as dates went. They had dinner at a nice restaurant, nothing too fancy or extraordinary, then walked around Central for a while, enjoying the brisk night air as well as the simple presence of each other. The pair were now standing in the driveway of Riza's home, Roy having stated earlier his intention to drive himself back later.

"Thank you for a great evening. I had a great time."

"I'm glad. Would you like me to walk you to the door?"

"I'd like that a lot, colonel."

He nodded, and walked with her to her door, falling behind slightly as they got there.

"Thanks again. I'll see you tomorrow—have a nice night."

"Lieut—er…Riza. Wait a moment."

She gulped a bit and swore she could feel her heart thumping harshly in her chest. Her name…Mustang never used her first name when addressing her... "…Y-yes?"

"I had hoped this day would come on somewhat different circumstances, but," he trailed off and Riza's eyes widened progressively larger as he pulled out a small box from his coat pocket and sank down to one knee. "Will you marry me, Riza?" he finished, opening the box to reveal a brightly glimmering ring.

"I-I…I…" Riza stammered, mouth vaguely opening and closing a few times without sound coming out. "…R-really?" She saw that smirk once again.

"Hughes always did tell me I should get a wife. What better time than Valentine's Day to try?"


End file.
